


There's a girl in the mirror

by ReddChaos



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: taako is alone and he knows he shouldn't be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:12:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReddChaos/pseuds/ReddChaos
Summary: Taako is on the road.  He's always been on the road.Why does he keep reaching for someone who isn't there, and why do all the mirrors look wrong?





	There's a girl in the mirror

Taako is walking.  Walking sucks, he's decided, and he's far too pretty to have walked so much in his long, but young, elven life.  After a boringly tragic childhood, walking is basically all he's known, and he's pretty sure by this point that it's safe to say he hates it.  

he thinks it's worse when it's the middle of a week long trek between towns, when he has to keep his guard up at every turn, but it's  _so damn boring_.  He's a skilled enough magician with quick enough reflexes to outspell and outmaneuver damn near anything, so really his guard doesn't have to be up  _so_ high, so really it just ends up being really, really, and he means  _really_ fucking boring.

There's no one around, and there isn't a sign of anyone having  _been_ around for a while, the only sign that other people exist at all the beaten dirt path beneath his own feet.  It's lonely.  It's quiet.  Taako isn't really sure which is worse. 

Now, he's not a big  _fan_ of people, or lots of them, but attention and adoration he feels he is very deserving of, and there's no chance in hell of getting that in the middle of fuck-all-nowhere.

 

Taako's made it to a town and he immediately hates it.  There's  _people_ here, and he doesn't know them and they don't know him and that's  _weird_.  It's uncomfortable and weird and bad.  He wants to be somewhere he knows people and they know him, but for the life of him, he can't remember such a place existing.  He rolls his eyes at his own melodrama and heads into town.

It's simple business to arrange a room at a tavern, to offer his unique culinary genius to the board portion of room and board, and to score a decent paying job for just a couple weeks.  That's about as long as he thinks he can force himself to stay in one place, or at least this one, before he goes stir crazy.  He just can't imagine staying here for long.  There's somewhere else he's got to be, or find, or something.  Damn him, he's being  _whimsical_ again.

Taako can't remember the last time he's slept in a tavern.  He knows it can't have been very long, the road and travel is all he's ever known, after all, but for some reason this feels... foreign.  The room and building and town of course are new to him, but the  _experience_ of it.  That, this, all of it should be old hat to him, and yet..

And there goes that pesky headache again.  

He shakes his head clear of the undeserving mystery.  He's tired.  He just walked for like a fuckin' week, and he's tired and gross and needs a bath and some time to meditate and then maybe sleep too.  

It doesn't take long to whip up that bath, though he has to spend a spell slot to heat it to the objectively perfect temperature, and then he soaks for a good long while, trying to at once forget the feeling of displacement and recall where the fuck it came from.  When those contradictory objectives are both failed and he's cleaned, he puts on a fresh set of robes and goes to start his face washing routine, but then something strange happens.

He's looking in the mirror, and his face looks wrong.

He can't place how or why, but something is just  _off_.  This isn't how this face is supposed to look... He digs around in his back and finds a makeup palette, one he's faithfully used for years now.  Taako knows what he likes; he bought copies of them so that he'd never run out.. but there only seems to be the one of it in his bag, and his favorite colors are worn from use, almost gone.  His head starts to pound again as he tries and fails to remember where  _exactly_ he bought it, so maybe he can get more, but he once again has to abandon that line of thought when the headache and the  _buzz_ of it get to be too much.

Oh well.  He can still try to fix his face, can't he?

Here, Taako lingers.  There's something charming about hastily done makeup, but he wants to conjure a very specific image right now, so he takes his time, hanging on the details until it's perfect.   _Just_ the way he likes it.

So why does this look wrong too?

He squints and pouts and poses and cranes, this way and that, but it just doesn't look  _right_.  He's so effeminate that he's effectively passed as a woman (and for a long time he identified as genderfluid so that was a huge bonus to him then), but he considers himself too.. masculine, somehow, for what this face ought to look like.  

Angrily, sadly, feeling all sorts of things he can't place and doesn't want, he scrubs the makeup off, scrubs too hard and leaves his face red and rough, and that  _still_ isn't right.  

Obsessively, edged on by a feeling he despises but can't quite stop feeling, he does his face and hair over and over, looking for something that seems right, but none of his usual styles are it.  Nothing he tries works.  They're all wrong.  It's all wrong.  There's a way this face should look and he can't  _find_ it.  He has too much hair, his eyes aren't right, there's some  _feeling_ he can't capture.  Like he ought to be an entirely different person behind this face.

But that's absurd.  He's  _Taako_.  Why shouldn't he want to be Taako?  Why on earth would he want to be or even  _see_ somebody else behind his own eyes?

But he does.  He very much does.

Maybe.. maybe he's just missing something.  Maybe it's just.. dysphoria.  He's been there before, there've been times when he felt more like a they or a she.  Maybe it's like that.  It doesn't  _feel_ like it, but he hasn't felt that way in a long time, and maybe it's one of those things that can change.

So Taako explores.  

Still nothing is satisfying, though he comes to a conclusion.  The person in the mirror isn't a girl.  But that's who he wants to see when he looks there.  It's the damnedest thing- He is a he, and has been for a while.  That hasn't changed.  But the eyes he's looking for, the face he wants to see?  Is a she.  But what other face could there be that's a she that isn't, well, he?  It's dizzying and that headache is at an all time high, threatening to drop him to his knees.  It's abominable and unbearable and so, so confusing.

Several hours having been wasted on this fruitless journey into stupid whimsy, with no satisfaction or conclusions that make sense, Taako decides he's just  _extra_ tired, and retires for the night.  The bed is cozy, and meditating would be easy if he could just forget about the person he apparently isn't.  When meditating fails, he opts to skip to the sleeping part, which is far less effective, he knows, but whatever, he's tired, today's been weird, and he wants to be Not Conscious in some form or another, thank you.

His dreams are haunted by a doppleganger that's dressed in fire and static who's face he can't see, and Taako leaves the town the very next day after he breaks the bathroom mirror.  It is a very long time before he looks in another again.


End file.
